Great potential - not developed

Rating: 6/10 (23 November 2003)

I've always been a fan of this genre of movie so was really looking forward to this. My review may contain SPOILERS.
I was quite disappointed however for a number of reasons. The film had great potential and a good story line but became unbelievable as soon as the characters reached Manchester. Upon reaching Manchester they met a bunch of "soldiers" who represented a modern day English version of the Dirty Dozen with a typically eccentric CO. Very stereotypical. From here the film descended into farce. The CO, played by Eccleston, had apparently lured our intrepid survivors to Manchester as he had promised his men "some women". We are now supposed to believe that British soldiers become sex crazed maniacs after about a month apparently.
To add insult to this, the central characters had spent the first half of the film being extremely careful regarding catching the infection as a single drop of any bodily fluid can apparently infect. In the finale however they are all running through a complete (infected) bloodbath of a house, in the dark, and yet none of them become infected. Incredible.
Plot aside, other complaints I have are regarding the lack of music in the film. The film had the set pieces and the plot premise for great atmosphere yet they didn't capitalise on it with any music (think opening credits of Omega Man or Soylent Green for instance) One of the characters who gets bumped off early on talks about the chaos at the rail station as people are trying to escape London yet we see no reconstruction or flashback of this or any of the other chaos associated with the virus. A 5 minute montage of what actually happened after the lab break in would have been good.
Also whenever there was an action scene involving the infected you couldn't actually see what was going on as it was all shot in a fast, flashy sort of camerawork which was really irritating - presume this is the digital some other reviewers have commented on.